Minds Eye Autumn 2024

My Journey as a Black Trainee in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

‘When there are more black voices in the room, the conversation changes. More perspectives are brought in, and the richness of the collective experience deepens.

For too long, psychodynamic therapy has been seen as a space for a certain demographic—white, middle-class individuals who fit a specific mold. But this work is for everyone, and the more diverse our practitioners are, the more inclusive and effective therapy becomes.’

The Body Speaks Its Mind: Attending to Body States in Psychotherapy

📆 When: Saturday the 2nd of November 2024, 9:30 -15:30 GMT.
💻 Where: In-person only The Lipman Theatre, Lipman Building, City Campus, Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon Tyne.
🎟️ Price: £85.00 qualified professionals, £55.00 trainees and retired professionals.

This conference brings together two distinguished analytic practitioners, Professor Joachim Kuechenhoff and Mr Ricky Emanuel, who, working in different professional cultures, have come to understand that emotional experience is rooted in the body, which can be thought of as coterminous with the mind. The speakers find common ground in valuing the work of Wilfred Bion.

Teaching for Learning: A Workshop with Clare Simmonds

📆 When: 30/11/24 Time: 10:00 -16:00

🏫 Where: The bpf House, 37 Mapesbury Road NW2 4HJ

🎟️Price: £35

Taking on the role of teacher in a psychotherapy/psychoanalysis training programme is something that many clinicians do, often without formal preparation. Teaching practice thus develops ‘on the job’, and the main resource (at least initially) that teachers refer to are the experiences that they had as students when training.

This workshop is an opportunity for experienced and beginning teachers, and those thinking of teaching in the future to critically evaluate their current or future teaching practice through the lens of recent developments in learning theory, and to share practice with like-minded colleagues.

Register below:

Online Infant Observation Conference

📆 When: 01/03/2025 Time: 10:00 – 13:00

🏫 Where: Online via Zoom

🎟️Price: £15 General Admission, Free for bpf members

This bpf Infant Observation Zoom Conference follows on from the sell-out, in-person only event in July 2024 with two presentations and a short workshop.

The thread of T S Eliot’s Four Quartets runs through Jennie Hogan’s award winning account of observing a little girl through the first two years of her life. Inspired by Jennie’s paper and the power of poetry to evoke states of mind, Marilyn Mathew explores the way Infant observation can put us in touch with worlds beyond words and how this can enhance our clinical work with adults.

The short workshop will enable people to play with an imaginal response to an extract from an observation.

Register below:

10th World Congress for Psychotherapy. 

Polarities of Life. 16-19 July 2025. Vienna. Live/online. 

The theme of the 10th World Congress for Psychotherapy is Polarities of Life, which seeks to explore the opposing forces that shape human experience and how they impact mental health and wellbeing. 

Register below:

Psychedelic treatments for mental health problems: promises and pitfalls 

A lecture summarizing the promises and pitfalls of psychedelic treatments for mental health problems. 

Eiko Fried from the University of Leiden. 

Psychoanalysis under conditions of war 

A discussion in English by the Freud Foundation US and the Sigmund Freud Museum, Vienna, in cooperation with the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the Lviv National Medical University, 14.06.2022 

This was two years ago, but still more relevant now than ever. Follow the link. 

Conversations with Annalisa Barbieri

In this episode I talk to long-time conversationalist psychotherapist Chris Mills about why some situations become so bad that estrangement seems like the only answer – indeed is it the only answer? What it can mean and how to try to build bridges after an estrangement (maybe one not of your making) if that’s what feels right.

A World Apart: the Work of Charles Lutyens

Observations of an Art Therapist

Charles Lutyens was an artist and art therapist, whose professional work took him to a series of institutions to meet and help treat the people within. 

Until 30 November. More information above.

On the Dialectical Dialogue in Supervision – Hanoch Yerushalmi 

Despite the hierarchical supervisory relationship, acknowledging their vulnerability helps supervisors recognize and validate their supervisees and facilitate the dialectical supervisory dialogue.

One of the occasional series of open access BJP articles.  

Committed: on Meaning and Madwomen – A Memoir

Suzanne Scanlon. New York: Vintage. 2024. 

A memoir concerning the treatment of prolonged grief in a major psychiatric hospital in the US.  

Read an interview with Suzanne Scanlon and Christopher Lane below:

Besides Family: extending the orbit of psychic development 

Collectively authored by psychoanalytic colleagues of multiple nationalities, ages, genders, religious origins, and meta-theoretical persuasions, Besides Family goes far beyond the usual orbit of parents and siblings. Casting a wide net, the contributors look at a number of key figures who may affect an individual’s psychic development and functioning. 

 Each character receives a full chapter which highlights both the beneficial and adverse possibilities within these relationships. 

The impact and influence of nannies, neighbours, childhood playmates, clergy, adolescent peers, lovers and mentors are given due weight in this thoughtful and important book.

One Tree, Many Branches 

The Practice of Integrative Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy

Bozena Merrick and Di Gammage (eds) UK: Phoenix 2024. 

As a 20^th anniversary celebration of Terapia training organisation, this book provides insight for practitioners to support children and young people from diverse populations. Chapter content ranges from Eco-psychotherapy to Working with Jewish Orthodox Communities, and other topics include discussions on racial trauma and female genital mutilation. 

The Nocebo Effect: When words make you sick

Michael Bernstein, Charlotte Blease et al. 

Mayo Clinic Press. 2024.

‘We are just discovering the power behind this effect and how it can be ethically mitigated. Enlightening and startling, The Nocebo Effect is the first book dedicated to investigating this fascinating phenomenon by the foremost experts in the field.’